There’s no feeling that compares with dedicating your life to a higher purpose instead of more mundane day-to-day stuff. But it does not require that you ‘throw the baby out with the bath water’. There are self-loving ways to make such a change, ways that are less harsh, less risky, and less disruptive to your life than you’d imagine.

Question to Paul: “I want to do spiritual work. What I’m doing as a job now is not meaningful or fulfilling at all. It upsets me so much because I really want to spend my life in work that has some spiritual purpose, or some real service. I want to do some good.”

Paul’s reply:
One seminar I did almost 20 years ago, just a short time after beginning the life-guidance work I now do globally, was one of the most uplifting and fulfilling for me. It was about shifting from a conventional career to more purposeful work. I was known then for having given up my regular career in the corporate world to do my spiritual empowerment work and these people wanted to know why and how I did it. They wanted to follow suit — discard their regular job for one that had genuine meaning and purpose.

During that seminar, I explained that I had walked out of my conventional career very suddenly and immediately began this new work full time. But doing so had caused a challenging, turbulent time for me — unnecessarily difficult, as I later realized.

Changing what you spend your working days on doesn’t have to be dramatic and disruptive or excessively risky. It just needs to be consistently doing what you deeply want to be doing.

First, set yourself the purpose that you want your life to have. It can be anything you deeply want to achieve as a service to humanity, to the Light, or to the world. It could be helping people understand their soul connection, or maybe helping communities live in more enlightened ways, or teaching children about their natural spiritual essence… whatever is true to your strongest inner calling. Mine was to help people understand and utilize their power to create their own reality.

Then begin immediately spending at least some of your time doing something (or things) that really do give you a sense of fulfilling that higher purpose or meaning, even on a very modest scale. It could be helping with a charity or social organization, maybe starting a community-oriented small business, or even gardening organically and sharing your crop, or running a meditation group each week.

Additionally, begin applying your chosen purpose to all the things you do in life that you feel you ‘have to do’ for practical reasons, or that you’ve always done even without any higher purpose — daily job, routines and the like. Ask yourself “How can I apply my chosen purpose to this activity?” If you definitely can’t find any way to apply your chosen purpose, then plan on stopping that activity as soon as you are able, and use the time that frees up to do more of the things you sense your purpose in.

The Universe will see you consistently acting on your chosen purpose. It will then swivel your life around in such a way as to provide more and more opportunities to do what you’re loving to do and what is raising your consciousness. Before too long, your life will be overflowing with the purpose and direction you seek. I know. I have experienced this myself and have witnessed it in other people’s lives.

Life is truly wonderful and remarkable in all sorts of ways… when you see it. Though it’s quite simple to keep a lasting joy of life, it’s also easy to forget sometimes as we get distracted or consumed by anything and everything that doesn’t meet our expectations.

Question to Paul:“I told my husband how I wish my legs looked more beautiful than they do, and he just said to me “They work, don’t they?” That seems a little callous, even hurtful.”

Paul’s reply:
Your husband is correct, in essence. I know of a young Canadian man who found immense fulfillment and personal achievement by climbing Mount Kilamanjaro in Tanzania, Africa — the world’s highest free-standing mountain — using only his hands… because he has no legs.

Losing sight of the wonderful things already in our lives is very easy.

And it’s a fantastic feeling to recover your appreciation of life again… without actually doing anything except changing your mind.

It’s vital to remain mindful of the things we DO have reason to appreciate in our lives — such as a strong and healthy body, or enough food on the table — things we might normally forget and take for granted. Besides teaching us a healthy humility, it gives us the opportunity to rise above fixation on the limiting, ego level of our existence, thereby enabling us to evolve and learn and grow into a hands-on experience of self Power, authentic Wisdom, and Unconditional Love.

Here are 5 simple steps to help you magnetize joy and fulfillment as you go about your own daily life:1. Appreciate intensely what you have and what you do love. Be consistent, persistent with that appreciation.2. Completely ignore what you DON’T want to fill your life with. Be consistent, persistent with that.3. Recognize, acknowledge and celebrate every time something you appreciate happens or comes into your life. (NOT saying or thinking such things as “What a coincidence” or “I wish that happened earlier” or “I hope that happens again.”)4. Acknowledge, appreciate and celebrate unconditionally when desirable things happen in other people’s lives. (NOT saying or thinking “I wish that happened for me” or “Why don’t I get those opportunities?”)5. Help others find fulfillment and achieve their aims. And celebrate their happiness and achievements with them.

In that way, you’ll begin to see life as the joyful journey and experience it’s meant to be. Plus, it brings the lasting fulfillment and peace we all seek deep within.

Appreciating what IS already in your life is a very important step in attracting and welcoming the abundance, understanding, peace, health, power, prosperity and Love that fuel and support happiness throughout your life.

Every day provides real opportunities to raise your consciousness in practical ways.

QUESTION to Paul: “Is there truly a way to be spiritual in my daily life like work, entertainment, family and all? I’m interested in the spiritual side of things but, for me at least, all that spiritual stuff appears to be just idealistic, not-real. I’d love to know because I want that realness. I want to believe it’s there.”

PAUL’s answer:
Definitely, there are many ways to live authentic spirituality in daily life, no matter what your life is like.

The truth is, nobody can be ‘unspiritual’ because we are each actually a spirit doing life (or at least trying to!) through our physical body in this earthly world. The question is really ‘Is the way we are doing life like or unlike the spirit that we actually are?’ Or, how much are we UNlike our inner spirit, living disconnected from, or ignoring (ignorant of) our inner spirit?

Here’s the process in a nutshell… To ‘do life’ more in keeping with your inner spirit requires that you firstly adopt principles throughout your life that are aligned with your inner spirit; with the guidelines that your inner spirit lives by (irrespective of your embodiment) and are fundamental to the spiritual realm (Universal Law). Then, once you embrace those guidelines and begin applying them — actually living them in your life — you’ll begin to become aware of how those principles influence the life you’d become accustomed to. The result of that is a discovery of your healing issues — issues and conflicts with your existing, familiar, ‘comfort zone’ life which are unique to you and have compromised your relationship with your inner spirit. Following that self awareness comes the choices that will either correct those mis-alignments (i.e. repair problems in life with Love) or not (live in denial, pain and fear).

Starting that process is a matter of learning and adopting spiritual principles and higher teachings. Here are 11 effective ones you can start with:1. Allow you to be you — you’re a vital stitch in the fabric of all life. 2. Value your uniqueness — without it, the cosmos would not be whole. 3. Allow others their uniqueness and value it, appreciating their individual journey. 4. Allow the flow of life to guide you without controlling it or forcing it. 5. Adopt non-judgement throughout your life — Accept that absolutely nothing in existence is right or wrong, good or bad. 6. Be pro something, anti nothing. Create something, destroy nothing. 7. Respect your body — it’s your vehicle for growth and learning, and it’s the only way to experience love, joy and fulfillment in this world. 8. Put your energy (time, attention, thoughts, beliefs, speech, emotions, actions) TOTALLY into what you truly want to experience, or into whatever appears to be most like it. Remove your attention TOTALLY from what doesn’t work for you or support you. 9. Take nothing personally. Nothing. 10. Trust — but stop short of being naive. Creation/The Universe is on your side always, all ways. 11. Regard all things, all circumstances with equanimity.

Undoubtedly there will be some challenges, but it’ll be worthwhile. You create your life so create with self-Love. Enjoy!

If you had to operate complicated and life-threatening machinery without a ‘User Manual’, how do you think you’d get on? How on earth would you use it without damaging something or someone, even yourself? Welcome to human life!

QUESTION to Paul: “How can I be creating my own life when I feel so helpless and disenchanted with it all? I can’t see how it works, at least not for me. I feel so helpless sometimes, as though I’m just watching a horrible film that’s really my life. How can I get back to the feeling of hope, and that it’s all worthwhile?”

PAUL’s reply:
Take heart, you’re actually in charge. It’s time to just change your mind, and here’s how and why…

The most important piece of knowledge is that you are actually the creator of everything in your own life — everything. Life happens through you, not to you. In fact, everybody is the creator of their own life. There are no exceptions to this foundational spiritual principle because it’s our Divine gift. And it’s Cosmic Law — it applies Universally, no matter who you are, or whether you believe it or not, or agree with it or not, or like it or not. And it’s impossible to break this Law, even if you wanted to. Once you know it’s there, you can only choose to either ignore it or use it. But neither choice will change the truth of it.

Whether or not you know it or believe it, and whether you like it or dislike it, or want it to be so or not, it makes no difference to this Law (or Universal Truth). It just works. Perpetually. And our life purpose and journey is to learn it and learn to apply its Power with Love and Wisdom.

The only real problem with life is that we were never given that piece of vital knowledge. Nobody told us how to operate it properly. And nobody told us the consequences of operating improperly. Most likely, that’s because either nobody knew, or the ones who did know wanted to keep it to themselves and watch the masses struggle with fear and lack. Some people accidentally learn or understand how to ‘do life’, but most just keep pushing the same old buttons and getting the same old results. Or is it a lack of results?

So the only difference between a person who seems like a helpless victim of their circumstances (thinking life is hell, and believes they’re helpless and powerless to change things) and a person who seems in charge of their life and fulfilled (empowered and uplifted about life, confident, feeling life is worthwhile whether or not they like their circumstances) is that the person in charge behaves as though they are creating it all, and the victim person doesn’t. Simple.

And how does this most important spiritual principle work in real life? Simply, it’s a matter of where your attention goes, creation’s energy flows.
So…

1. Observe your own thoughts and actions, without judgement.

2. Realise when you’re thinking, watching, talking about, doing, looking at, listening to or imagining anything that is not what you’d want your life to be filled with, and…

3. Shift your attention — there and then — towards thinking, watching, talking about, doing, looking at, listening to or imagining anything that DOES resemble what you’d like your life to be filled with.

Be consistent, diligent and relentless in that core spiritual discipline and the changes in your life will begin almost immediately.

The path to an authentic, sustainable experience of achievement and fulfillment definitely involves doing what’s spiritual. But what does that really mean?

QUESTION to Paul:“I want to do what’s spiritual, what will help me spiritually, but I also need to do what’s practical in this world to survive and live.”

PAUL’s Reply:
First, know that you are already spiritual — you’re a spirit functioning through a body. You’re not a human trying to find your spirit, you already ARE the spirit you seek. The whole material world is a RESULT of the spiritual world. The body/human is meaningless without the spirit, or life-force, that enlivens it and enables it to journey through life. The primary purpose is to bring our human life into alignment with our inner spirit — to experience your embodiment to be the physical, active, living evidence of your spiritual essence, your Higher Self.

That said, everything you do as a human in this world, while in your embodiment, is a result of your relationship with your inner spirit. What you do in life is simply a 3-D construction — a material model of how you as a human relate to the actual spirit that you already are.

Therefore, everything you do is spiritual. Everything. Never doubt that for one moment, no matter the circumstances.

However, the ego, or physical (human) self, finds great need to stop the spirit from expressing authentically through its embodiment because ego doesn’t understand anything that’s not in the material world. Ego only knows the material, outer world and believes it’s all that is. As a result, the things people do in life are most often a compromise of, if not a total conflict with, their true nature as the spirit they fundamentally are. This is because the ego has hijacked their life.

If you feel that what you do is not a very accurate expression of who you really are, then the onus is on you to make changes around what you do so that it comes more into alignment with the real ‘you’ and you feel more that you are being true to your ‘self’, your inner spirit.

Everything and everyone is spiritual, no exceptions. And everything you do for practicality’s sake is just as much a part of your spiritual journey as the things you do that you consider more ‘spiritual’.

For many people, their life feels awkward or unpleasant or just ‘wrong’ because of the way ego pulls and distorts the spirit’s guidance on its way through the person and out into the world as human activities.

Correcting this doesn’t require sudden, drastic or damaging changes.

Just keep doing what you do now in the practical world… and begin diligently and persistently applying your inner values — your inner urges and callings — in practical ways to everything you do. If you’re willing to do that then change will happen, I assure you! Whatever you do will become increasingly a reflection of your spirituality whilst meeting the practical requirements too.

You’ll find that before long, you’ll be facing all sorts of new challenges (your real spiritual path) as well as getting a greater and greater sense of it being ‘right’, worthwhile, or a ‘good fit’ for you (self Love). That’s called being ‘in resonance’.

When you’re on your spiritual path, you’ll do everyday things, some of which you’ll like and some you might hate, but… you’ll LOVE it!!

QUESTION to Paul: “I’m worn out. I try to put things in my life right, the way they should be, but every time I make some progress, something else crops up that needs attention. It’s never ending. It wears me out and I can’t seem to get ahead. I want my life to be fulfilling, not exhausting.”

PAUL’s reply:
People have gotten so conditioned to thinking of everything in polarized terms — opposites (being right OR wrong, good OR bad, better OR worse, should OR shouldn’t, can OR can’t, will OR will not, etc…) — that we’ve come to believe that it’s the way things actually are. But in reality, it’s just the way we’ve come to BELIEVE things are. Big difference!

When you see or believe something is wrong or bad, then the ego wants to correct the ‘wrong’ to be ‘right’, and prove itself ‘right’ and ‘good’. It wants to change the ‘bad’ to become ‘good’ and stop those who do what they ‘shouldn’t do’ and make them do what they ‘should’ do. The result — conflict.

But the ego is seeing life from its own little ego-centric point of view, believing it’s the RIGHT and GOOD point of view, of course! It doesn’t see the greater reality which is always in balance — totally neutral, and existing for the purpose of (and by means of) variety and uniqueness, not sameness, so that we can have choice. (Having no choice creates fear, the opposite of Love).

I’ve traveled all over the world for decades and I’ve witnessed vastly different ways of life and incomprehensibly different ideals. All are perfectly appropriate in their own locale yet many would have been totally unacceptable in other places. It’s a matter of context, not conflict.

Truth is, nothing is good or right, it just IS what it is. And it’s all valid, every part of it, if only by virtue of the fact that it exists as a part of the universal variety of life. If it exists, then it’s part of creation, and the rest is just little human mentality applying personal perspectives, preferences and biases.

To become more balanced, start seeing and believing that nothing is right or wrong, nor good or bad. No exceptions. You’ll begin to see all life through the eyes of creation itself — all the beauty and texture of life that you’re intended to experience and love. And choose from.

More importantly, when you start seeing life in a balanced way — relishing variety and uniqueness instead of resisting differences — your ego will stop trying to ‘put things right’ or ‘prove it right’ or ‘make it good’ etc etc. There, in a single change of mind, conflict will become obsolete. Moreover, you’ll have a wealth of energy and resources to create what you’d Love to be experiencing.

Life IS variety — differences are everywhere and everything. When you realize and accept differences as necessity and benefit, instead of problems, then your life will flourish in joy and abundance… because there’ll be no conflict consuming your Love and creative energies.

Ever wondered where the User Manual got to? The one you’d think would be given to us before trying to operate something as demanding as life itself? Well, there’s not enough space here for the full Manual, but…

QUESTION to Paul:“I feel so helpless sometimes, as though I’m just watching a horrible film that’s really my life. How can I get back to the feeling of hope, and that it’s all worthwhile?”

PAUL’s Reply:
The crucial difference between a master and a victim is their belief — a victim believes they are a powerless victim of circumstances whereas a master believes they make life happen.

In both cases, theirs is not a wishy-washy ideal, it’s reinforced, confirmed, trusted knowledge proven by experience. It’s not a mere idea, it’s real. In BOTH cases.

The beauty of this is that anyone who believes they are a powerless victim of anything in their life only needs to open their mind to the mere possibility that they are the creator of it. Then the doors begin to open and in pours that power and understanding… and gradually the experience of it.

How come? Because the reality of it — the Truth with capital T — is immutable: We all create our own reality, our own life. We can’t change the truth of that, we can only avoid it or deny it or use it against ourselves (in which case it becomes increasingly hopeless, difficult an painful) or accept it and learn to apply it (in which case it becomes valuable and fulfilling, effortless and playful). In either case, you continue to create it.

It is a falsehood — a travesty of life itself — to suggest that anyone is a victim of anything. In Truth, we are all creators. And when the clutter of our controls, denials and fears are removed, natural flow restores Creator Consciousness… in ANYONE who opens the doors of their mind to the principle.

And Creator Consciousness blossoms, naturally. Because it IS the natural state. The same way that grass grows when we stop cutting it, so Creator Consciousness blossoms when we stop blocking it out. Denying or avoiding or fighting it is supremely hard work; trying to hold it at bay in order to feel or believe you’re a victim is a hugely difficult, 24/7 occupation. And like any hugely difficult job that’s 24/7, it becomes an endless struggle, an overwhelming preoccupation with pain and dissatisfaction.

So just let go. Accept that you are the creator of your life. What your life looks like now is only reflecting to you how you have been using your creative force to date. Study the reflections that are your life so that you can understand what is in YOU that created them. If you don’t like what you see, choose to use your creative force differently. Learn how to wield your creative force with renewed purpose. If you can’t think of a purpose, why not adopt the purpose of Self Love? Or happiness?

Your Creator Consciousness requires no effort or trying to make it work because it’s natural. All you need do is allow it to work. It does require self discipline though. And it will immediately begin to reap rewards.

How do you change the reflection in a mirror? Certainly not by changing the mirror. It happens by changing yourself. Then the mirror — your life — will immediately begin to reflect those changes.

That’s the ‘Quick-Start Guide’. If you’re unsure or have questions, please contact me.

Have you ever tried to figure out or decide what’s ‘right’ or ‘good’, or what you should do or must do? Well, relax — you can stop immediately!

QUESTION to Paul:“I’m not sure if I’m being in my integrity — I see a situation in front of me and feel torn between different courses of action. I don’t know the right way.”

PAUL’s reply:
Being in your integrity means doing what’s in your heart, what resonates, what’s deeply true to you right there and then in the moment; what feels like a true ‘fit’ for you. It is not a matter of doing what’s good or right, mainly because the truth is, there is no right or good action to choose, there’s only action.

WHY you make your choice and HOW is what matters, not what you choose.

Why? The reason…
All we’re meant to do is experience life… and learn from it so that our experience of life becomes a more vivid manifestation of Unconditional Self Love — more fulfilling, empowering, uplifting, enriching, enlightening, joyous…

How? The method…
1. Be true to yourself in your actions, without compromise (not just what you think you should do).
2. Ask yourself “What did I learn from that experience that helps me understand myself and life? What did I learn that will make it clearer for me, more empowering, healthier, self loving, enriching?
3. Commit there and then to a course of action you’ll take next time, in light of what you just learned. Action simply shows the Universe what you actually learn.

That’s the enlightened, spiritually-responsible process. The mindset of “How will I know what’s right or good or best or acceptable?” just locks you into the mass diseased consciousness of fear and control, limitation and loss of self.

Your self-truth is what’s vital. Truth will always bring healing, rather than untruths which only prolong pain.

Be your truth and you’ll be the healer.

It’s time for you to break out and do what feels deeply important to YOU, and allow the rest of the world to respond in the way that’s true to them.

Be sure to always Love, then what you’d truly love to experience will come to you.

QUESTION to Paul: “My work is a bit neglected at the moment as matters of heart have taken precedence.”

PAUL’s reply:
Matters of the heart should always take precedence. No exceptions. It automatically brings all matters of the heart into context, balance and alignment with all of life and thereby magnetizes to you experiences you love in all areas of your life. Because nothing in life is separate from anything else in life — it’s all connected — and Creation is guided by you, your life circumstances constantly reflect to you the state of your heart energy, your Love consciousness.

So your state of heart energy (Love energy) determines the creativity, joy, love, ease, and harmony you experience in all areas of your life… including the work you do. And it can always be brought into focus and clarity by exercising the self-discipline of Allowance — perpetually, uncompromisingly, relentlessly throughout everything you do, everything you say, everything you feel and everything you be and choose in life. Just Allow.

Your focus and attention on Love consciousness (the state of your heart energy) in that simple way will begin to heal and balance everything in your life. It’ll also constantly feed and nourish the associated physical organ in your body — your physical heart.

As matters of the heart energy come into context and focus by you exercising the self discipline of Love (Allowance) in every part of your life, it’ll also bring into focus where your heart is in terms of your work. And that way you’ll get clearer on what you’d truly love to be doing, you’ll magnetize it effortlessly to you, and all the time you’ll be loving life more and more in every other way as well.

Additionally, living in that way, everything that is crucial to your evolution and overall wellbeing will miraculously just ‘appear’ as your next step in life. You’ll heal and be magnetizing work that you love, people that you love and things that you love! And, you’ll be moving along your proper path — your reason for being here on the planet; your Life Purpose.

It’s all natural progression from simply being in your heart and exercising Love (Allowance) relentlessly at every step you take.

When we are truly finished with any circumstance or condition of our life, it changes. It changes because the Universe wastes nothing, and to continue creating something that has become obsolete (for example a relationship or friendship that you have actually outgrown, whether you know it or not) would be wasteful.

QUESTION to Paul:“I have an issue of holding onto things, including friendships. What can I do?”

PAUL’s reply:
People usually hold onto ‘people things’ because it’s actually unresolved for them — it hasn’t brought a result that they can accept. That’s usually because they think that they, or somebody else, haven’t actually done what they were ‘supposed’ to do. So it’s most often a case of life not meeting our expectations; not delivering what we thought it would or should. And until it does, we don’t want to let it go because we want to fix it; to put it right or make it good.

But it sounds to me as though you can sense impending change… Ask yourself why you feel the need to hold on?

Are you changing, moving on, evolving? Wanting them to come with you? Or are they moving on, and you feel out of step with them? Or even left behind? It sounds to me that you’re moving on, finding that things are not true to you any more, not resonating with you. And by the same token, the unknown that lies ahead seems daunting.

Rest assured that if things are changing then it’s ideal that they do so. It’s for the greatest good of all — for you and for everyone else.

When we resist change, we resist the flow of the entire cosmos — a tall order! And it brings pain… which is what you’re feeling as the need to hold on for fear of loss, fear of the future, fear of being powerless in the face of what life might bring.

It’s time to adapt, not resist.

Change is a powerful force that we can capitalize on, instead of feeling a victim of it. The fact is that change happens. And the most important thing to know and remember is that it’s YOU who guides the change that actually occurs in your life. Yes, you do! How do you guide that change? The flow of change is what’s called ‘Creation’. Creation ‘watches’ what you put your energy into — what your thoughts are, your emotions, your actions… what you focus your attention on. Then Creation changes things in your life so that you experience your thoughts, emotions and actions. That way, you experience what you choose to focus on — what you focus your thoughts, emotions and actions on. And that is your true power.

Simple! But not necessarily easy, I admit. Ignore anything that is disappointing or upsetting or painful — don’t give it ANY of your valuable attention (energy) or you’ll just experience more of it. Instead, start training yourself to focus all your thoughts and emotions and actions on what makes (or would make) you happy and fulfilled. Miraculously, life will then bring you more and more things and people that will bring you happiness and fulfillment.